The recent recapture by the United States of the America's Cup from Australia has increased the general awareness of the sport of sailboat racing which is known in the art as a regatta. However, the elaborate character of a regatta is such that only a very few persons ever have the authentic experience of participating in such an event. As a result, there is a place for a game which accurately simulates much of the actual experience of participating in a regatta.
In the past, there have been board games and the like proposed which generally incorporated simulated aspects of sailing. For example, such games are disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 1,500,782 to Vegiard; 2,455,519 to Powers, Jr.; 3,656,758 to Thatcher; and 3,871,656 to Selness 4,550,917 to Ferris et al., and foreign patents (U.K.) Nos. 889,725 to Benyon and 567,020 to Barton; (France) No. 1,501,739 to Jaillard; and (PCT) No. 8,103,285 to Selness. While each of these prior art references disclose, meritorious aspects of a sailing game, each suffers from one or more drawbacks which include: the use of predetermined courses which offer no variation in play except for the random selection made by movement of a spinner; the concentration on the learning of specific skills relating to the sails on a boat with little regard to strategy or the reasoning requirements to overcome the progress of opponents; the primary emphasis on skills affording little or no variation in play; and allowing for no exercise in the reasoning necessary to adapt to various situations and/or to overcome an opponent's progress. More briefly stated, the prior art regatta board games do not effectively actually simulate the numerous variables of regatta racing which present widely diverse situations to which a competitor must respond.